The ballistics of seventeenth century musket balls

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the firing of seventeenth Century musket balls. Prior to this research, the main concerns with making range predictions were associated with the deformed shape of the musket balls affecting their drag coefficient and therefore their distance to ground impact. However, the distance due to bounce and roll after initial impact has been unknown. In this work, the distance travelled after the first ground impact greatly exceeded expectations, with the musket balls approximately doubling the distance to their final resting positions. From these findings the initial factors thought to have had high relevance to the final resting position of the musket ball (velocity variation and drag co-efficient) become less significant and factors such as ground hardness become more prominent. The knowledge gained during this investigation will allow more accurate information to be obtained on the firing positions of opposing forces during conflicts in the English Civil War.     

The number of Huguenot immigrants in England in the late seventeenth century

The task of assessing the number of Huguenots seeking refuge in later Stuart England is exceptionally difficult. They left France by stealth, so no emigration lists exist. French names could be anglicized almost immediately on arrival across the Channel or otherwise changed beyond recognition, and marriage and burial records concerning Huguenots are often entered in the registers of English churches rather than those of the French congregations themselves. As refugees the mobility of the Huguenots was great. Guesses as to the numbers reaching England, exaggerated in the eighteenth century and since reduced, have varied from 20,000 to 150,000. A study of surviving baptismal records, in conjunction with other evidence including informed contemporary estimates, suggests that some 40,000–50,000 Huguenots settled in England betwen the late 1670s and the reign of Queen Anne. Refugee communities were located south of a line drawn from the Severn to the Wash. Almost all were near the sea, normally in towns rather than in the countryside. By far the largest concentration was in London; living for the most part in the eastern and western suburbs, Huguenots comprised about 5% of the total population of the capital at the end of the seventeenth century. Their contribution to the commercial and political transformation of England which took place at that time was significant and deserves re-evaluation.     

The age of the Cambro-Britons: hyphenated British identities in the seventeenth century

ABSTRACT

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Welsh writers including the antiquary Humphrey Llwyd, the bard Gruffudd Hiraethog, and the epigrammatist John Owen began referring to themselves as Cambro-Britons. The term was quickly adopted and popularised by English writers, often in ways that show an imperfect grasp of the intentions behind the hyphenated phrase. Whereas the Welsh had hoped that the English and Scots would adopt similar hyphenated identities, English writers tended to interpret “Cambro-Briton” as an intensified and potentially comical expression of Welshness. Though Welsh writers largely ceased to employ the term after the 1620s, the use and misuse of “Cambro-Briton” in English texts continued unabated throughout the century.     

A possible account of synaesthesia dating from the seventeenth century

An account of a blind man able to detect colors by touch, dating from the mid-seventeenth century, is presented. The details come to us through the physician John Finch, the scientist Robert Boyle, and the author Jonathan Swift. The details in the account suggest the possibility that this may be an early report of colored-touch synaesthesia.